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Awards
OverviewSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD The autobiography that John Aubrey never wrote. Discover the perfect seventeenth-century English gentleman in his own words. 'A truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD This is the autobiography that John Aubrey never wrote. You may not know his name. Aubrey was a modest man, a gentleman-scholar who cared far more for the preservation of history than for his own legacy. But he was a passionate collector, an early archaeologist and the inventor of modern biography. With all the wit, charm and originality that characterises her subject, Ruth Scurr has seamlessly stitched together John Aubrey's own words to tell his life story and a captivating history of seventeenth-century England unlike any other. 'A game-changer in the world of biography' Mary Beard 'Ingenious' Hilary Mantel 'Irresistible' Philip Pullman Full Product DetailsAuthor: Ruth ScurrPublisher: Vintage Publishing Imprint: Vintage Dimensions: Width: 12.90cm , Height: 3.20cm , Length: 19.80cm Weight: 0.373kg ISBN: 9780099490630ISBN 10: 0099490633 Pages: 544 Publication Date: 07 April 2016 Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , General , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: To order  Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us. Table of ContentsReviewsScurr wrote the biography Aubrey didn't write - Aubrey's own - in a biographical form that is unique, new and gripping * TLS, Books of the Year * This year saw one of the most audacious biographies I can remember reading: Ruth Scurr's John Aubrey: My Own Life... What we are presented with is a wonderful artificial composite: a fascinating patchwork made up of extracts from Aubrey's notebooks, journals and letters, chronologically rearranged with consummate editorial and novelistic artfulness by Scurr. The result is haunting, memorable and, in the field of non-fiction, unprecedented. * TLS, Books of the Year * [A] moving and delicate book -- Frances Wilson * New Statesman * In a year that has seen the publication of Ruth Scurr's John Aubrey: My Own Life, it's hard not to wonder...why everyone else bothers. Oh, you think, it's because they started writing their books when the earth was still flat... Scurr's book alters our perception of the territory. You would be sceptical if you weren't awestruck: Aubrey's voice is exceptional, and Scurr's fragmentary form is perfectly suited to her subject's magpie preoccupations. -- Gaby Wood * Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year * It is a bold and brilliant experiment, but it suits the fragmentary nature of Aubrey's work and life. -- Andrew Brown * Sunday Telegraph * Another writer of brief lives, Lytton Strachey, feared that in our modern civilization John Aubrey would 'never come into existence again'. But that is exactly what he does in Ruth Scurr's absorbing and imaginative biography. In these pages his purchase on posterity returns with all his ingenious visions and impulses. Scurr is no less a pioneer biographer than Aubrey himself. -- Michael Holroyd An extraordinarily original piece of biography... gripping, moving, and beautifully rendered -- Neel Mukherjee * New Statesman * Scurr's judgment and scholarship in constructing Aubrey's own account of events are so flawless that she allows us almost to forget that she is there * Guardian * Scurr confidently walks an imaginative life between historical fact and fiction. Her Aubrey - curious yet self-effacing- is a very English hero * Sunday Times * In an act of daring ventriloquism, Scurr here tells Aubrey's life story in his own words, stitched together from his scattered manuscripts. The result is a triumph of historical imagination, as vivid and endearing as its subject's own -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian * Writing a biography of a biographer that doubles as an experimental analysis of biography itself is a formidable and astonishing achievement. That it is also profoundly affecting is what makes John Aubrey: My Own Life a triumph -- Stuart Kelly * The Times Literary Supplement * To me this book is a delight and...it is the one that I would take with me to a desert island * The Times * An audacious and successful attempt to write a biography in the subject's own words. Scurr has ingeniously edited Aubrey's swift, vivid prose into a coherent account of the life lived by one of the most interesting (and interested - in everything) writers of our most exciting century, the seventeenth. Irresistible * Guardian * Extraordinary -- Mary Beard * Spectator * My Own Life is light, ingenious, inspiring, a book to reread and cherish. The vigour and spirit on every page would delight John Aubrey, that most individual of thinkers and writers, who has found a biographer of originality and wit. It is reverent, charming, poignant: it is made of the same ingredients as its subject. -- Hilary Mantel My Own Life is light, ingenious, inspiring, a book to reread and cherish. The vigour and spirit on every page would delight John Aubrey, that most individual of thinkers and writers, who has found a biographer of originality and wit. It is reverent, charming, poignant: it is made of the same ingredients as its subject. -- Hilary Mantel Another writer of brief lives, Lytton Strachey, feared that in our modern civilization John Aubrey would 'never come into existence again'. But that is exactly what he does in Ruth Scurr's absorbing and imaginative biography. In these pages his purchase on posterity returns with all his ingenious visions and impulses. Scurr is no less a pioneer biographer than Aubrey himself. -- Michael Holroyd Writing a biography of a biographer that doubles as an experimental analysis of biography itself is a formidable and astonishing achievement. That it is also profoundly affecting is what makes John Aubrey: My own life a triumph -- Stuart Kelly The Times Literary Supplement To me this book is a delight and...it is the one that I would take with me to a desert island -- David Aaronovitch The Times For me, the academic historian, Scurr's experimental act of scholarly imagination has already modified significantly my own historical understanding -- Lisa Jardine Financial Times [A] moving and delicate book -- Frances Wilson New Statesman Scurr's judgment and scholarship in constructing Aubrey's own account of events are so flawless that she allows us almost to forget that she is there -- Alexandra Harris Guardian The marriage of [Aubrey's] words and Scurr's is so smoothly achieved that I have no idea where one leaves off and the other intervenes -- Allan Massie Scotsman Scurr's imaginative feat of retrieval has produced a perfect book for dipping into when you want a taste of what it was like to be alive in the 17th century -- John Carey Sunday Times It is a testament to [Scurr's] skill that you quickly stop thinking about technique and instead slip happily into the company of the character she has created. The wealth of research and the seams between imagination and reality disappear from view. This is truly selfless biography -- Daisy Hay, 5 stars Daily Telegraph A delightful read about the ebb and flow of thoughts in one extraordinary man's mind -- Claire Harman Evening Standard Drawing on [Aubrey's] manuscripts and letters, [Ruth Scurr] has fashioned, as chronologically as possible, an autobiography in the form of the diary that Aubrey never wrote. It fits him perfectly... Ms Scurr has done him proud The Economist Aubrey was a delightful, self-deprecating man ... A conventional biography of Aubrey could easily have become a portrait of the time through which he had lived, allowing the man himself to be overshadowed ... Instead, Ruth Scurr has invented the diary Aubrey might have written, incorporating his own chaotic, sometimes scrappy literary remains to form a continuous narrative. ... lucky him to have been accorded a biography as whimsical as his own self -- Clive Aslet Country Life It is a bold and brilliant experiment, but it suits the fragmentary nature of Aubrey's work and life. -- Andrew Brown Sunday Telegraph Scurr's book illuminates and poignantly captures the voice of a man more often a ghostly record keeper in his own writing -- Carl Wilkinson Financial Times Author InformationRuth Scurr is an historian, biographer and literary critic. She teaches history and politics at Cambridge University, where she is a Lecturer and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College. Her first book, Fatal Purity- Robespierre and the French Revolution won the Franco-British Society Literary Prize, was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and was listed among the 100 Best Books of the Decade in The Times. She reviews regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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